أجد رواح القوم أم لا تروح — Jarir

Is the people's evening departure in earnest, or is there no departing?

Yes; everyone who cares for Juml is grief-stricken.

When she smiles, she reveals tooth-tips as though they were

banks of rainclouds pouring down and flashing.

This longing has indeed stirred an ailing eye,

that rolled a mote about and kept streaming because of it,

like the eye of a curved-nosed gazelle, early astir, shaking off dew,

from whose gaze darkness clears when morning comes.

And I granted Amr his own terms for Umamah,

yet Umamah brings greater gain to the one who buys her from him.

The heart sobered from Salma, though she had tormented it;

what it suffered from Tumadir was more grievous.

I found Sulayma indifferent to what ails us,

nor caring for a hint of a need that goes unfulfilled.

When Asma travels one day beside women in their litters,

Asma is the loveliest of those women.

They lingered around Asma's curtained litter, while there bore away

Asma a broad-legged camel with swaying flanks.

Sulayma says there is no comfort in parting.

On the contrary: some parting brings more healing and relief.

I love you; love is the herald of passion,

though what lies between me and you has almost drained away.

Will you not rebuke those who speak obscenities to me,

as I take pains to defend you in your absence?

You two, call on Salma; I have never seen her equal,

a friend of sincere affection, visited and praised.

And my heart would, through love of her and a remembrance,

by which we recalled Salma despite the distance, rejoice.

Whenever I come to visit her, on any day,

a scowling, jealous man among her people grows agitated.

How wondrous an eye that, at her mention, never ceases

in every circumstance to well up and pour out tears.

The goad of yearning and passion never left me

whenever I came, until it nearly showed itself and exposed me.

I conceal my passion, fearing she might be overpowered by

spies and rancorous enemies among her people.

The passion never ceased, having become entwined

with the soul, until it almost slew it with longing.

How different a day between a hanging curtain and a gauze canopy

from the passing of riding camels, traveling morning and evening!

O our augur, what do you foretell, now that there have passed

leftward-crossing creatures before the camels, and rightward-crossing ones?

We measure our scant remaining water by the pebbles,

while the camels droop forward over their drawn-in chests.

And a day in al-Jawza's season, setting the pebbles ablaze,

when the roots of the eyelashes almost crack from its heat,

fiercely blazing, scorching in midday heat, its wind

more hurtful than its sun when it blazes fiercely,

in a dusty waste blazing with scorching wind, where you see

the flanks of Mahri camels and their napes oozing sweat.

I set my face against it, with a sturdy she-camel that seemed,

from strain and night travel, a sun-scorched breeding stallion.

Do you not know that generosity is part of my nature,

and every shrewd merchant seeks a profit?

So do not forsake me because you see the owner of a great camel herd

bringing it home to reproach, whenever he brings it home or sends it to pasture.

He thinks it too little to fill the gaps in his poverty;

over every trouble at hand, he grieves.

She saw a small herd belonging to the Hanzali, as though it were

splintered spear-shafts, some marrow-fat and others exhausted.

You and the guests, should they lodge with us, will have enough—

if there is no milk, fire-browned roast meat.

And a capacious pot, no curtain set before it,

for our guests and the fortunate seeker of gifts,

sitting firmly, yet tossing up backbone joints as though it were

a restive mare that repels its handlers and kicks out.

When the boiling surges through its hollows,

you see the breastbone tumbling about its sides.

Have people not been told of me that I do not wrong

an innocent man, and am a challenger to those who challenge me?

Among them is a man shot, whose heart has been struck,

and another who took a blow and was left reeling.

Sons of Malik, al-Farazdaq has ended up cowering in his hole,

the last horse home, outstripped by noble, full-grown stallions.

The finishing posts were indeed secured ahead of Mujashiʿ

by illustrious horsemen, while Ibn Shiʿrah labors on.

There has always been a front-runner among us, as you know,

who emulates the deeds of earlier front-runners and praises them.

Surging waves from the sea have risen over you; scoop some up

with both your hands, and see which of its two deeps you can bail out.

My people are indeed more faithful to their pledges than Mujashiʿ,

and better when a dawn raider drives off the grazing herds.

The scales of the effeminates, Mujashiʿ, weigh light,

while my scale weighs heavily against them and outweighs theirs.

I boasted of Qays, and you boasted of Taghlib;

you will soon see which of the two parties fares better.

As for the Christians who worship their cross,

they failed; as for the Muslims, they succeeded.

Has word not reached them that al-Ukhaytal has fallen,

and a headlong plunge hurled him into a people's abyss?

Al-Ukhaytal's baseness overtook his striving for honor,

and a broad, flat back like a Qasit woman's.

We receive tribute every year, with which you protect

yourself; yet the humiliation you suffer is more grievous.

There has always been guarded for Qays and Khindif

a broad preserve that the swine pass beyond.

When Qays and Khindif close in on you

from its borders, you will not know which way to escape.

Al-Hudhayl's swords have indeed been drawn against you,

thin-edged, with not a blunt blade among them.

And the white-socked legs of chestnut horses at al-Marj waded through your

blood, while the swine's mouths bared their teeth.

You met Mashrafi swords in the hands of Amir,

biting into the heads of armored men and wounding them.

On a battlefield where, at the stroke of their edges, there fall

spinning skull-fragments, or wrists are flung away.

Al-Jahhaf advanced against you with horsemen in force,

while you wailed on the bank of the two Zabs.

They wore ample coats of iron, as though they were

shallow pools amid hard ground on a cloudy day.

A day at Sinjar remained a disgrace to you,

and a day at the watering grounds of al-Rahubayn was more disgraceful.

And at al-Bishr you left women's nakedness unprotected,

their striped cloaks slipping away from them.

Through that we made the lands forbidden to you,

so you have no room to move along their borders.

Abu Malik, drunkenness tilted your head,

and you fled when the battalion's ram was gray-flecked.

When you see a lion from a Taghlibi woman,

then ill-favored be that lion and the sash-wearer!

You see an eye-socket of hers, when she veils her face,

ugly, and what lies beneath the two veils is uglier.

Her hands have never touched the Ancient House,

but she seeks blessing by touching the offering of the cross.

They vomit remnants of wine, overlaid with

salted, rendered fat from the swine of al-Sawad.

So in Najd you have not a pebble to count,

nor a pebbly plain in either lowland of Tihamah.